The Great Rewind
by Blkwidow77
Summary: An endless chatter that dies into a silence without name or face. Retrace fears and mindless words. You come to an end that has no choice but to start again at a beginning. Push the button, and go back.
1. Copper On Sunset

A/N: Once upon a time, I used to love this site. I had an infamous story 'Twitch, Twitch' and legions of fans. Then one day the fairy tale ended. Fan fiction said no more 'Insert You' stories, and my story died.

Maybe I'll stay here, probably not. But here's the beginning of a story I was thinking about.

Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho, nor it's characters.

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_Well, she died._

It's not that I wanted it to end that way, but that's what happened.

A fight, a bang, a whisper. Maybe a hiss. Maybe not. There was red, and blue, dark green and hints of orange in that final scene, that last breathe. I remember a purple sky. The sun that was an angry red setting far off in the west.

It would have been more appropriate for storm crowding clouds, a mysterious mist, but those are for perfect stories and this is nothing but life in all its ugly beauty.

And what I remember most about her?

The copper nail polish she favored. Not quite orange, not quite brown it danced back and forth between those two colors to always look this vibrant copper.

That's a lot like how she lived her life. This back and forth between the good things in the bad. The right choices and the wrong ones. I guess it had to catch up to her sooner or later.

I just wanted to see her chewing bubble gum and popping dreams. I wanted to see her stroll in, slap me on the shoulder way too hard and scream "Truce!!" before I could get her back.

Now I just want her to come back.

**No, I won't have this.**

_This is not the way that it's supposed to be._

Silent screams and lucid dreams to bring about the great rewind. Force the hands of hour and the minutes of sand slipping through glass.

The rewind button.

Push it.

Yes _you_, push it.

Let's start this over again...

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This is the part where you can tell me the preferences of who you want this to be about, who you want to be speaking? An other character? Boton? Keiko? So on and such forth.


	2. Where Everything Falls To Gray

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I hadn't planned on updating so soon but I had some unexpected time on my hands. That and I had old fans to reminisce with and it got me thinking of the old days here, before fanfiction went haywire. It was so much fun back then.

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Anywho, since I was all jazzed, I actually started the next chapter and before I knew it, I was done! So there, pat yourselves on the back old fans. You did good. ^^-^^

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Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho or Boton's blue hair. I DO HOWEVER, own my dirty pink socks and you can't have them. *_sniffs socks and almost dies_* **WHEW!!!** Yeah.... *_gag gag_* these are definitely due to be washed...

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_*suddenly dies anyway, like a cockroach on its back with its legs up*_

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**Previously:**

~~Silent screams and lucid dreams to bring about the great rewind. Force the hands of hour and the minutes of sand slipping through glass.

The rewind button.

Push it.

Yes _you_, push it.

Let's start this over again...~~

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_~One Hundred & Fifty Nine Years before Yuusuke was first hit by the car and killed~_

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Boton hated this place.

She slid an irritated hand over unruly bangs as the shadows slid by.

Making meaningless gestures, as if they could almost believe they were still alive.

Everything was ambient, layered in shades of gray. A world that wasn't really a world at all, but some kind of psuedo plane. You couldn't tell anyone that what they were doing was pointless. You couldn't tell them that whatever moment they were going through in this place, would never _ever_ change. That to arrange for some kind of better ending then the one they knew now, was impossible.

Everything here was as it was always going to be. No surprises, no unexpected turns,

_no future._

Why was she here?

Off to Boton's right a shadow the size of a small boy, paced back and forth, running here and there only to stop and circle back again. His arms were half outstretched as if looking for something to hold, or for something to hold him. _'momma..._' he cried. _'moommmmaaaa...'_ he whimpered.

Other shadow people walked by him as if he was not there, going on about their own business. He walked into the between their legs, to peer up into their faces, always looking for just the right one. It wasn't long before someone knocked into his small body pushing him backwards. Laying there splayed on the pavement, his dark gray mouth curved into a perfect frown. _Still no one would stop_.

As the child began to cry, even Botan had turned away from his frail form to walk on...

Further up her eyes followed the greyed ground that she walked along. Specks of light gray rice lay scattered everywhere she went. The waste of a thousand hungry children. Food scattered like sand.

Nothing seemed to attract her attention, until she found herself blocked by a graying brick wall, slowing her path. A tall, painfully thin male shadow stood there, leaning back against it for support. In each of his hands were rough wood crosses, with strings coming down to connect to painted puppets. One such puppet was a large dog with floppy ears he could make move. The other, a young girl with short cropped hair and an old rag dress. She did not have shoes to wear.

Boton couldn't remember the last time she'd ever seen a puppet with bare feet and briefly found herself paying unexpected attention, as the man gracefully manipulated the puppets with his fingers, casting his voice to theirs in montone muffled voices, while he played out some kind of story. On the sidewalk beside him, lay his old gray hat, that was turned upside down, in hopes of collecting money. There wasn't a single penny inside for all his efforts, but the man kept trying anyways, never stopping the ongoing dance and chatter of the puppets that moved below him.

There was no one watching except Botan. Here too, each shadow just kept walking past, oblivious to anything but themselves.

It was clear by the way his clothes hung from his body, that the man had not been able to afford a meal in a long time.

But there was nothing for her to say, her pony tail dripping down her back, heavy against the rubber band that held it. And so she moved on.

As she continued to walk, she passed fields filled with silence, with cats carrying their dead kittens around in thier mouths, while dogs curled up on lawns, whimpering by themselves. Birds fell out their nests, with wings that could not fly while the uncompassionate ants were coming to eat them. Only the trees did nothing.

It wasn't long before she passed a gray haired older boy who was strange only because he was laughing. He held his hands close to his face and between his fingers, he tore the wings from flies and butterflies, while his teeth glittered in the dull light of day.

_Botan hated this place. _

Though she could no longer remember where she was or how to leave again.

The longer she was here, the more her memories seemed to fly away from her. Her name becoming harder and harder to recall.

When a ball rolled into her feet, she was swiftly pulled out her own thoughts, startled. Looking down, at the medium gray ball that hit her, it seemed to suddenly pop itself, and deflate in seconds. The young toddler shadow crawling nearby, stared for just a moment, before its face crumpled into wanton tears.

She wished she could steer clear of all this but there was no where to go, that wasn't someone else's melancholy sadness playing out in painful notes. A broken piano, a broken heart. A song that never stopped playing~

Up ahead, what looked like a carnival. loomed up but looked no more cheerful in its hapless greys.

Heading towards it anyways, she crossed a school playground, where a gang of girl shapes pushed another girl into a fence. There was unkind laughter, cruel jokes made about the girl shadows face, her thick body, the way she spoke and pronounced her words. The grim faced girl struggled to pull her skirt down with small hands, sadly attempting to cover more of her legs, while Boton turned away from the sound of stifled tears and open faced unpleasent sounding reciprocating sneers.

The carnival itself turned out to be an irony. All bright music and quiet shapes that moved from ride to ride. A group of running children grabbed her hand, pulling her on to the dark shades of a carousel to ride in meaningless circles with nothing to look at but the anxious faces of parents that waited for this shifting carousel to finally stop.

Boton did not know how much time she lost going up and down on the carousel horse before she finally got tired and jumped off.

She walked past troughs that were completely dry, while white gray show horses kept licking the bottom, hoping for the taste of water. She walked silently past a hapless clown sitting on an upturned bucket, crying. His make-up running down in large streaks of white, ruined. Even the light gray and dark gray striped tents looked thin and slowly worn away.

She wished this day would somehow end but there was no beginning to start with. Just the same things happening over and over again, against the faded light of a sun that could not set.

This is when she gets to the point when she stumbled onto something familiar. It was hard for her to place it, but she found herself in a room that she knew she had been in before. There was a plasma screen that lay against one wall and a rectangle shaped work desk. Two double doors opened to the far left of her, but they were closed right now.

Somehow a shadowed male stood not that far away from her face. She stared silently as he held his arms behind his back, as if he were afraid of what those hands of his might do.

This shadow representation of this person she knew, stared back at her. Someone opened the double doors and walked through at that next moment, but he told that person to leave. Boton clutched her stomach protectively at the sound of an impatient voice and the doors closing once more behind her.

'_Oh my god, I remember this_' Boton thought to herself _'I've been here before. I've been through this scene all before...' _

Boton swayed on her feet but kept her hands over her stomach. He stepped towards her pleaing for her to understand his situation but she couldn't seem to make herself look at him. She couldn't understand any of that, that happened, she never would. She kept shaking her head no, but never felt like she was getting through to him, at how very scared she was.

Her eyes fixed themselves on his feet and every time he took a step closer, she took another step back, like they were locked in some kind of ugly dance. He seemed to be trying to make her listen to some kind of crazy plan. But she wasn't going to be part of any of anything that had anything to do with _him_ anymore. And when he finally reach out to touch her face..._ this was w_hen _she finally turned and ran._

Out the double doors she went, flinging them so hard they cracked against the outer wall. Her oar materialized seconds after she called it and she flung her unsteady body on the thin wood handle. But she was too high strung, too upset, too lost outside herself, and as she climbed twenty feet nearly straight up, she lost her grip, tumbling straight backwards to land face down with an unnatural thud on the floor. Her stomach clenched to knots and a cry tore itself apart from her throat, and mercifully she finally then blacked out..

A second later, everything had rewound itself, with the unmistakably sick sound of an old VCR machine. The thick reels spinning back. And all over again, she found herself standing unhurt in that same room, looking at the same large screen t.v. that was against one wall and the exact same large desk on the other side... the shadow of him facing her once more~

Botan screamed!!

"I'm not going through this anymore! Let me out! **Let me out!**!" she said at the top of her lungs while her eyes stared at the ceiling and she shook her head manically from side to side...

The walls melted away and she ran. Tripping on her feet, she would stumble only to catch her balance, arms out and keep going. Layers of gray blurred by her as she ran, bumping into shadows now and then, but never stopping, _never saying sorry._

Until, she found herself in another open field, collasping on her back sweating and gasping to catch her breath.

She stared up into the light gray sky for the first time since she got here, _and that was when she first noticed them. _

Ribbons. _Beautiful silky ribbons tumbling down from the sky in every color imaginable_. Sea greens, and lark blues. Royal purple and Barbie pinks. Sunflower yellows and tangerine orange strips of shimmering strings. How striking the look, how stunning! As if a giant rainbow had been cut to shreds one day. And each one hung impossibly in midair, about six feet up from the ground, stretching far far up into the sky, where she couldn't see the other end.

And as she continued to lay there transfixed by the colors shining above her, they shifted gently with a soft wind, teasing her eyes. She felt the tears on her cheeks beginning to dry and pulled herself up.

Unable to control her own hand, it operated of its own accord reaching up toward the colors. Her slender fingertips brushed then grabbed lightly onto a tangerine orange ribbon that hung just above her face...

And to her startled surprised, the ribbon snapped stiff as a board at her pulling. There was an unwinding sound like a rope releasing and the bright orange silk ribbon snaked down and coiled itself around her arm.. _then tightened._

But before she could utter a simple scream, a single word, an attempted cry for help;_ it yanked her arm nearly off and then pulled her painful wrist and all, up up up into an endlessly aimless gray sky...._

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Ah yes, me and my infernal questions! But what is life without questions?

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So yes, a few of you got some opinions in. I know a lot of you were hoping for Keiko but that wasn't to be this time. _~sideways grin~_

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On the other hand, the guy is still yet to be named. So you don't know who that is, and you can still give me your opinion on who you want it to be. ^^-^^ ( ---- alien happy face)

You could also confess if you say this coming? Was it who you expected or what you expected? Does it disappoint or intrigue? Or does it simply bore? I hope you can see it? I like to paint my stories like picture books....

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	3. The Phone is Evil

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Disclaimer: I do not own Yu Yu Hakusho. What a surprise!

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I have strange ideas for this story. I wonder what will become of it?

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"_**The Phone Is Evil"**_

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_Previously:_

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_And as she continued to lay there transfixed by the colors shining above her, they shifted gently with a soft wind, teasing her eyes. She felt the tears on her cheeks beginning to dry and pulled herself up._

Unable to control her own hand, it operated of its own accord reaching up toward the colors. Her slender fingertips brushed then grabbed lightly onto a tangerine orange ribbon that hung just above her face...

And to her startled surprised, the ribbon snapped stiff as a board at her pulling. There was an unwinding sound like a rope releasing and the bright orange silk ribbon snaked down and coiled itself around her arm.. _then tightened._

But before she could utter a simple scream, a single word, an attempted cry for help; _it yanked her arm nearly off and then pulled her painful wrist and all, up up up into an endlessly aimless gray sky...._

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_"Please you've got to help me. It hurts. It hurts so much."_

The young woman's mother whines from the other side of the phone.

The young woman tucks a stray hair behind her ear and hardens the features of her face, so her co-workers will not pick up what the conversation is about or who the young woman is talking to. It's around mid day at work, judging by the where the sun slides in through the outer offices of this square building. She scrunches down in her seat to try to keep from being overheard.

Botan stands there, a few feet from the young woman. The tangerine orange ribbon that has drug her here, the ribbon she snagged from the sky of apathy, the gray land Sun-ri, has dropped her some where back in the past. The ribbon is jerking and trying to free itself but Botan knows better than to let it go here and ties it tightly around her wrist to keep it from escaping.

_"Mother, have you told dad yet?"_

He's not her father, but her step father, and she made sure that Botan would have that clear later on, when they finally met face to face. Her name was Nana. She was still alive then...

Nana was twisting the telephone cord tighter and tighter around her fingers. Botan watched as they grew red and tight as ripe tomatoes. Knowing Nana later on, she knew right at about this point, Nana had been wondering when her mother had been re-admitted into the mental ward again. "_Isn't there a limit to how many times you can be sent there?_" Nana would later ask Botan.

Botan did not have an answer then. Nor does Botan have one now. __

"He knows. He agreed with them. I'm so scared. I'm so scared. It hurts. I hurt everywhere." the mother replied, whispering into the phone. Nana could tell that her mother was paranoid. Her mother had told her over and over that everyone was always listening to all her conversations, that all the nurses were trained in espionage and were listening and watching her every move to see if she'd give them away. Nana didn't believe her. She knew her mother was sick, but there was no convincing her. And after 22 years of this kind of life with her mother, she had gotten used to it. Not that it made it easier...__

Her mother's breath broke against the craggy edges of her throat and she's crying again. She told Nana in a cracking voice about having been put under the umbrella treatment of ECT, Electric Shock Therapy. It hurts, can damage the brain, causes the loss of years of memories and makes you wet yourself like a child. Supposedly it's a treatment for making you forget bad memories, so you can be normal again, but Nana had deep reservations about such experimental treatments and whether or not they actually worked.

Her mother sounded like an orphan, gripping the receiver of the other end and sliding the gold of a small pile of coins she had to keep slipping in one by one for this long distance pay phone call. So Nana had caught her fall within one week. Stopping treatment with the very real threat of lawyers knocking on a white door of their mental institution. She had learned not to play play duck, duck, goose with the funny farm. (that is, to say, not to try to get them to understand reason)

Botan had been watching her awhile at Koenma's request back then. At the time, Botan had not understood the point to watching a girl that was very much alive and seemed fine as far as her health. Koenma had only said that the girl was walking a thin line of fate. And each decision she made, would tip her one way or another on this tightrope. (life is all a tightrope, every choice we make, an attempt to balance our lives)

Now Botan knew what Koenma had meant back then. She resented him for not telling her more. Not that she could interfere with the girls fate while she still lived but that was not the point. She feels that this was just one more example of proof that Koenma had never trusted her. And she had been too blinded by her feelings to see it then.

No, that's not true. **She didn't want to see it then. **

And all the while, Nana would imagine her five year old brother running loose through their old neighborhood during all this, without mother there to scold him and keep an eye on him.. His fat father lying nearly naked on their ugly spread mattress that they stole from a Motel 6 years ago; barely able to see over his belly towards the television. _While he flipped aimlessly from channel to channel..._

What kind of father was that? That day Nana had hung up the phone and never told anyone about what was going on. She felt very alone in the world. And a crazy mother made a lousy friend. Threatening the mental ward with lawyers had seemed the only thing she had the power to do with no money in her bank account. That and the fact that Nana lived several hundred miles away.

It did irk Botan that Koenma had been right to send her there to keep an eye on Nana. However, Botan was even more angry still, that she had not been better informed. If she had, perhaps she could have avoided what had happened a few weeks after that incident...

Botan had taken to following the girl through a lot of her days. Nana had never told another soul about what was going on. At work, she would smile and laugh and gesture her hands in elaborate story telling when she talked to them. If Botan hadn't known better, she could have been fooled into thinking that Nana's mother's situation didn't bother Nana at all.

But as soon as Nana stepped away from work, she changed into someone else. Her face would fall like an angry sky of rain. Her eyes became granite and her voice became the impatient sound of nails down the chalk board. She yelled at people in stores for stupid little things, and pushed men out of her way on the sidewalk just because they were there. She stepped on people's feet when she walked by and refused to say sorry.

This was not like the Nana in Koenma's file of her. She was a troubled girl, who grew into a troubled woman. But she was not overly mean and had never acted this way before.

About a week after the incident, Nana had begun a fight with another woman in a lingerie store. It had been Nana's fault for shoving her, especially when it was not an accident. When the other young woman followed her outside, the yelling between them escalated and Nana took a swing at her face, making contact with the other womans left cheek. The other woman had pulled a knife from her back pocket and sliced into Nana's right arm in retaliation.

By this point, someone had called the police and when the cop car had pulled up along side their fight in broad daylight, the other girl had taken off.

But Nana hadn't. Nana hadn't cared. Not about the fight, being sliced open by a knife or the police coming to arrest them. But it seemed as if luck had been on Nana's side even then.

Nana, still in a business suit, stood shock still with her hand held down over the flowing blood from her wound. Her constance and face was without any show of guilt or remorse, giving the illusion of being a victim. Taking in her proper appearance against the other woman, who had short cropped pink hair and jeans, they took it to be an attack of a punk against a proper lady. And with Nana not speaking to them and no one having witnessed the other girl getting pushed in the store, the matter had been dropped as Nana was not pressing charges.

Nana had refused to even go to the hospital for stitches. Instead, she went home, pulled out gray colored duck tape and quite literally taped her arm closed. The skin was hot to the touch and throbbed. But Nana didn't seem to pay it much mind after that and her professional clothes hid the duck tape that no one but her knew was there anyways.

It was at this point that Botan, back then, had thought that this was why Koenma thought she might not make it. That one day this young woman's luck was just going to run out and someone would kill her. So Botan had never see coming, what happened next.

Over the following week from that incident, Nana's behavior grew more and more careless. Because she still showed up for work and covered her change of behavior, no one there really had any idea. There was a cute looking guy in the mail room that she had always been nice to before. And he would try to draw her into conversations but now she never seemed to be much aware of him or his interest and would quickly leave him in mid sentence.

Nana couldn't seem to see anything anymore but the phone. Its obnoxious ring had become her enemy, as she could never know when it might be her mother or her step father calling to drag her further down into their hell. She felt powerless and angry. Blaming her mother and blaming herself. Nana had soon gotten to the point that she never answered the phone and only called back when a customer had left a message. If she kept this up, she knew she would get fired but she couldn't seem to care. Botan had watched on then, wishing there had been something she could do to help but it was forbidden to meddle in the living's lives and choices.

Meanwhile, the guy that took care of the mail for the company she worked for, continued to watch her from afar. He had hated this job from the very beginning but he still continued to work there. Botan had noticed him after awhile and checked into his records. It seemed he had taken this job while he went to college but had been staying here specifically because of Nana. Botan had felt sorry for him but this kind of thing was common. How many people just didn't notice the feelings of others around them?

Botan could absolutely relate to him now, looking back on the situation. Isn't this also her own problem? Where she had looked on someone with secret feelings that had never really been noticed? And when they had after a very long time, had 'he' not disregarded how important they were? Did Botan's own 'he' ever really care to begin with?

Botan shook herself from her thoughts. She was here and must find her way out of this past. There was no need to stay here and suffer this again. But it was at this point that the guy with the mail passed by her. Yuki, that's right, that had been his name. The file had shown that he was a wonderful guy. It was such a shame that Nana had never been able to notice him.

Yuki had his own plans though. He couldn't know what Nana was going through but he was determined to make her see him. He approached her desk cautiously that day. She had seemed to be in the middle of filling out some forms and never noticed that he waited for her to turn and see that he was standing there.

When she did not, he cleared his throat. Still she did not turn around. "_Um_" he said softly, pulling at his collar. "_Excuse me. You're... you're Nana, right?_" he tried again, a little louder. He knew exactly who she was, but he didn't want to press his luck by being too intimate with her.

She barely picked her head up, not even bothering to make eye contact "_Yeah?_".

He seemed daunted by her unusual dismissive and rude attitude but pressed on. "_Hey, you know I see you all the time and I was thinking that.._." but the phone rang right then and Nana's face turned swiftly away from him to stare at it as it continued to ring. They watched it together, Nana and Yuki. Nana with a stricken, slightly fearful face and Yuki looking confused as to why she would stare at it but not just pick it up?

After four rings the answering machine picked up for her. In the sudden silence of the phone, Nana's extremely tense shoulders seemed to relax some. She did not turn back to Yuki but he took that as a good time to start talking again anyways. "_Um... Why didn't you answer the call. Isn't that part of your job?_" Yuki asked with some puzzlement.

But that... well, that was just the wrong thing to say to Nana. She looked him fully in the face for the first time in weeks and her eyes glared with sudden life as she snapped "_That's none of your damn business! Who died and made you God? You're just the damn mail boy, got it? What business do you have telling me what my job is? Why don't you just do me a favor and ship yourself to China, would you?_"

By this time, her raised voice had attracted her co-workers attention. They stared at her with surprise and anger. Shouting in the middle of the office? She noticed too late what she had done in a public place. Instead of apologizing however, she turned her back on Yuki's stricken face, picked up the phone and went to retrieve the phone message, expecting him to disappear...

Yuki continued to stand there for several seconds after she had yelled at him. Inside his heart was crushed and he struggled to keep tears from getting out. She had always seemed so friendly and happy before. He could hardly believe that it was her.

And before he could break down in front of her, the woman who never noticed his budding feelings of love, he turned and walked stiffly away from her and the others eyes...

Botan had witnessed this whole scene the first time that she had been here. It had crushed her own heart as well, to watch it happen to him. He could not know what was going on with Nana and Nana could not see past her own fear and grief. Nana had become completely self absorbed.

But if Botan were to be asked now, who she felt more sorry for, she would easily reply that it was for Yuki. Because she felt most like him in being rejected when she had loved in a completely open way. It was even harder to watch this whole thing happen a second time and Botan felt tears coming to her eyes. Unconsciously, Botan put a hand against her stomach and rubbed it. Her body was empty now, and all her dreams were gone just like Yuki's, with the careless actions of a self absorbed person. It was getting harder and harder to control her own bitter feelings that surfaced.

And though Botan had not wanted to watch all this happen all over again, she couldn't seem to leave. Some more powerful cry within herself made her continue to watch what happened that day.

Yuki, having been crushed, had walked outside for ten minutes, crying silently to himself and getting his composure back. When he had walked back inside the building, Nana's boss had called him inside their office and had asked him if he wanted to report her behavior towards him. He had pulled on a bright face and lied to the guy, saying that it had been his fault not hers. Once more, letting Nana escape the consequences of her actions.

However, it seemed to make a point to Yuki, that if he was still defending her than he wasn't ready to give up just yet. And the more he had thought about, the more he had decided that he had been rude to say something like that to her and that somehow it was really his fault.

So it didn't surprise Botan, when she later saw that he waited for Nana to leave after work that day. He had been leaning against the side of the building, close to the door out. She had left fifteen minutes later then most the others so there really wasn't anyone else really around when she finally stepped outside the doors.

Yuki had swallowed nervously and ran a hand through his thick hair, as he tried to ball up the courage to approach the woman that had yelled at him so viciously before. He thought his plan would be a little better this time, as he was going to start with an apology.

Nana did not walk past him however, much to his surprise. She walked away from the parking lot where her car was and headed for the sidewalk. It was starting to get dark and she was wearing high heels which hurt when you walk to much in them but she didn't seem to care. Worried for her safety and determined to speak to her, Yuki had followed. She had got several blocks before he finally caught up with her at a bridge that was designed for large trucks and cars, so it was very wide.

Nana seemed oblivious to the fact he'd been following closely behind her, so he braced himself in case she should hit him and then grabbed her hand from behind.

Startled, Nana had tensed up immediately and without even looking behind her, she had turned and struck her presumed attacker across the face. She had hit him so squarely, that the pain had shocked Yuki enough to release her hand. With a red hand print along the side of his face and an aching heart, Yuki stood his ground and faced her. The way he saw it, he didn't have much more to lose and he'd already come this far. But before he could say a thing, she looked at him and hissed "_What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you to leave me alone! Are you stalking me?_"

"_No, I..."_ Yuki's courage was flagging under her cruel words. He wondered if he could have been wrong about her, but he was already in too deep with his feelings, so he held on. "_No, I had waited for you today so I could apologize for upsetting you earlier. I don't know what I did exactly but whatever it is I'd like you to forgive me. I really wanted to start over because I really li-"_

"_Who do you think you are, following me?_" she cut him off saying "_I came out here to be alone. I don't really care about your apologies I-_"

"_I'm falling in love with you!_" he blurted out, grabbing her hands quickly, before he could chicken out entirely. He didn't want to hear anymore ugly things coming from her mouth and he didn't want to never get the chance to tell her. He might have kissed her if he wasn't afraid she'd bite him. Seeing her startled look and the odd light in her eyes, he used the quiet to press on "_Hey look. I... I'm sorry for upsetting you. And I know I'm not anybody special right now. But I'm going to college and I will be somebody someday. And right now... well, right now I'm just a guy standing here and holding your hands." _

At this point, she was staring at him, her hands limp in his, watching him with eyes that didn't seem to be all there. But she was listening, he was just sure of it and it gave him the courage to go on, _ "I followed you because I had to tell you how I felt. I've got to quit work in a few weeks because I've got to move to another university that I'm going to, to finish school but I don't want to lose having a chance with you. I know it seems all the sudden but I could see us having a family some day, a couple of kids running around and-_"

Nana had snatched her hands back at his mentioning a family. Kids running around made her think of her little brother, her lazy step father that other people had always thought was so wonderful. Did her step father talk to her mother like this once to? Her mother, her crazy mother with electricity being shocked through her body. Her mother crying on the phone. Tears and pain and children running unheeded through the neighborhood. _Nana couldn't take it anymore._

She took one step backwards from Yuki, then another. His hands still held out, his face twisted in pain and love and hope, wanting to touch her while she only continued to pull away from him. She looked at him with eyes that narrowed in distrust. She could hear her mother crying in her ears...

And then she turned, stepped off the sidewalk into the street to flee to the other side... a_nd got hit by a passing truck. _

Back then, both Yuki and Botan had cried out in surprise and horror.

Yuki had ran to her bloody body and crumbled up beside her, calling her name and cradling her broken head against his chest. But Botan did not. Nana had been hit so hard, that her spirit had been knocked directly out of her body and had rolled several feet away.

That had been then. Now Botan, just watched her old self and the scene play out. Back then, she had been absorbed with dealing with Nana's spirit, but now she watched Yuki as he pulled her body close and cried into her hair. Off into the distance, Botan could hear the sirens coming closer and closer.

And what had happened after that? Well, Botan had struggled with Nana, who continued to flash her anger and fight the situation. She had clawed Botan in the face and refused to go with Botan on the oar. It had been a terrible fight and Botan had ultimately lost. The spirit had fled to her mother, haunting her from that moment on. A spirit stuck in the living world. This was the worst outcome to happen to a ferry girl. It just wasn't allowed.

When King Yama had found out, he had called her into his office. It was the first time it had happened to her so she would not get fired but he had struck her in the face and yelled. Koenma had known what was going on but had not stepped in to protect her.

The fear that Koenma may not be the person Botan thought he was, had wormed its way into her heart for the first time then. Later, he had tried to console her and make light of it, but she could never quite forgive him. He was more afraid of his father, then he cared about her.

She should have listened to her instincts then. Perhaps she would not be in this place right now.

Botan had seen enough. Yuki's devastated face was heart retching. It was a mirror of her own, a face tormented with loss and she couldn't deal with that.

And with that thought, she untied the tangerine orange ribbon from her wrist. It flailed wildly, snaking back and forth, trying to escape her fingers. But she held on tightly and instead raised her arm towards the sky. The orange ribbon stretched up and up. And as it did, many other ribbons unwound downwards from all over the place.

Just like before, the sky became once more filled with ribbons of every conceivable color of the rainbow. But in her distraught state of mind, she could no longer remember which color would take her where. There were so many and each one would take her to a different place.

Botan didn't care where she went this time, just so long as she got out of here. She snatched onto the closest color she could reach. A bright canary yellow ribbon that coiled in swirls. She grabbed hard onto as she released the orange one. The yellow ribbon snaked down her arm, tightened hard and yanked her once more into the sky...

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Some love is just not meant to be, huh?

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Sad but true...

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End file.
